In Vino Veritas

“Sometimes you’ll buy a vase or a picture and you’ll put it on the sideboard or on the wall, and it’s ok. But it’s wrong. And that’s what I feel when I see you in this flat. You’re just wrong.” Ooh boy, in vino veritas indeedy from drunk Peter!

Peter gave lots of great material this week but this one blew me away. Mainly because he absolutely nailed it! I’m glad he finally got drunk. At least then he saw the truth. And he said it in such a hurtful way that maybe Carla will actually leave him. I know she won’t. She seems to need unavailable men and this makes him at least psychologically unavailable so she will love him that much more desperately. Sure enough, she was soon crying on Michelle’s shoulder about how much “I love him.”

I wish she would just look at him: what’s important is not that he’s an alcoholic, it’s that he’s nasty and immature. He showed his true colours when, cold sober, he burst into Underworld and interrupted a conference call. Although she quickly broke off the call, it wasn’t good enough for Peter who got furious because she hadn’t immediately snapped to attention.

World of Peter

When she rightly said everything is always about him, he said no it’s Simon Simon Simon. Oh yes it is when Simon meets the “me me me” and “it’s all your fault” that comprises Peter’s world.

When Peter allowed Simon to live with Leanne, he said he was going to start listening to Simon’s wishes. He also looked at Carla and said it would give them more time together. I thought then, hmm, I do a good deed that just happens to also benefit me. Convenient.

So at Underworld, when she got mad about him expecting her to drop everything to tend to him, for him to immediately say you’re probably glad Simon’s gone, you didn’t want him anyway – I could only think somebody doth protest too much. I could see why it would occur to him about himself, but why would it even cross his mind about Carla?

Carla has been remarkably good with a child who doesn’t even try to hide his dismissal of her. If anyone is feeling that they might have pushed Simon out, I think it’s Peter. But admit to that, even to himself? No! Peter’s way is to blame everybody else. It’s Carla’s fault, his dad’s for sending him to Scotland lo those many years ago, Nick’s fault, Leanne’s. When I saw little Eccles with Ken as a drunken Peter stumbled across the road, I wondered if he’d blame her.

Peter, when drunk, feels sorry for himself – not unusual drunken behaviour. Peter, when sober, feels sorry for himself – and nothing is going to change then. Carla would do well to remember words ascribed to Winston Churchill: when a lady said to him, “Sir, you are drunk!” he replied, “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”

Michelle saw Peter threw his tantrum in Underworld. Michelle saw Carla come back in tears after moving back to her own apartment. If Michelle had half a brain, she could say, “This was Peter sober. This is Peter drunk. No difference. You’re not in love, you’re in a sado-masochistic co-dependency. And you are wrong cooking fish fingers in a flat over a bookie shop, you belong in a luxury flat with hideous velvet wallpaper.” But Michelle doesn’t have half a brain, and Carla is a co-dependent sado-masochist. Whether in vino veritas or stone-cold sober truth, Carla needs to see it.